Metta and the divine

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I believe that we are all aware of only a tiny part of ourselves. The conscious part of ourselves is just the tip of the iceberg, and the bulk of ourselves is beneath the waves. Part of that unconscious is childish and even pretty nasty at times.

But the deepest parts have a wisdom that often we can only guess at. Our conscious minds rarely pick up on that wisdom, although sometimes we can in dreams or when we’re particularly intuitive, i.e. when the barrier between the conscious and the unconscious are particularly permeable.

There are times when we experience our wiser deep subconscious, but because we don’t experience it as “us”, we experience it as “other.” So we may feel a kind, loving, wise presence, or even have a vision or hear a guiding voice. I think of such experiences as being experiences of “the divine”.

One of my students described such an experience when she said:

“When I was describing the experience I had about a week ago where I felt a strong benevolent presence, you mentioned that the feeling of metta can be external or internal. That really struck me, because at the time I didn’t really express how external the feeling was. It really felt as if there was a very strong presence in front of me generating a deep sense of compassion, comfort and love.

“To be honest, I thought to myself that I was in the presence of God. I thought that there wouldn’t be much place for this sort of experience in Buddhist thought, so I wasn’t sure what to make of it, although I certainly didn’t want to dismiss it.”

This kind of experience is not uncommon in meditation. In fact it forms the basis of some kinds of meditation practice. Buddhist visualization practices are an attempt to integrate qualities of wisdom, compassion, and unobstructed energy through contemplation of symbolic forms that in some way correspond to those qualities (which are already present in us, but are as yet unrealized).

So in visualizing the compassionate form of a Buddha image we’re really calling to mind our own potential compassion and thereby creating a channel from the unconscious to the conscious. Eventually a sort of integration can take place, so that the meditator and the visualized figure merge. So in this kind of practice it’s very common indeed to feel a sense of metta or other blessings flowing from “outside” oneself.

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